PLAMONDON, Alta. — Lac La Biche was turning away donations. So was Grasslands. Wandering River was stocked. Evacuation sites throughout Edmonton were turning away both supplies and volunteers.

But in the Francophone community of Plamondon, went the rumours, there was still need. And that’s why, just after midnight, our four-vehicle convoy from Edmonton pulled up with a small army’s worth of diapers, water and non-perishables.

Inside the Centre culturel Philip-Ménard, tables are piled high with clothes and toiletries. Carafes of coffee and hot chocolate stand at the ready. But the only other visitor is another freelance convoy looking to drop off supplies.

Thus, with most convoy drivers approaching their 24th hour without sleep, they hit the road to take their load elsewhere.

Tonight, along the near-deserted roads of Northern Alberta, this convoy is among dozens of good Samaritans who dropped everything to drive north in a mission to provide aid to anyone they could find displaced by the Fort McMurray fire.

Tristin Hopper

There are four vehicles in this particular convoy. Two trucks pulling loaded trailers of non-perishables. A Ford F-150 carrying jerry cans and baby formula.

And from Lloydminster, Sask., a truck pulling a trailer-mounted BBQ unit. With a cooler full of meat in the back seat, the idea is to find a gathering of exhausted evacuees and rescue workers and comfort them with a spontaneous roadside feast of burgers and hot dogs.

For the most part, the convoy members were strangers before the fire.

They hit Facebook with offers of trailers and vehicles starting Tuesday — and within hours they were abandoning spouses and work to head north.

There’s Kari Holmberg, a dog trainer from Ponoka. Jess Gallagher from Red Deer. Joe Bulhoes, an oilsands worker who had been scheduled to head up to Fort McMurray before the fire started.

And organizer Barry Cherneske, an amateur radio operator leading the charge in a one ton dually with an orange beacon on the roof.

They are exactly as most of Canada would picture Albertans: They listen to country music, they own guns, they tell dirty jokes and they can spend hours passionately arguing the merits of Dodge vs. Toyota trucks.

But together, they’re fulfilling an Alberta tradition that stretches back to the days of homesteading; Mother Nature tries to wipe a piece of the prairies from the map, and a rag-tag army of random Albertans drop what they’re doing to stop her.

It happened when floodwaters devastated Edmonton in 1915. It happened five years ago when wildfires swept through Slave Lake. And it happened when floods devastated Calgary and High River in 2013.

And it’s hard to stress just how ingrained this is in the local psyche. Alberta is always a few steps away from a war footing. The province is filled with people who have heavy-duty vehicles in the driveway, radios and protective equipment in the closet — and the training and background to use them.

As Cherneske drives north, his phone explodes with offers of help from all across the province; tractor trailers of food, convoys of tow trucks, oceans of free fuel. Wal-Mart, CostCo and Superstore all gave him standing offers to back up a truck and take “anything he wanted.”

“I’ve been trying 26 hours to find a way to help,” said a rattled-sounding tow truck driver from Calgary.

There’s at least $10,000 of goods in this convoy; all supplied by a random stream of donors who called at a Wednesday afternoon drop-off point in North Edmonton.

Tristin Hopper

There were young men swinging by on the way home from work with coolers of Gatorade. There was the man from Wetaskiwin in a “Fuck Isis” T-shirt who pulled up in a truck that was nearly dragging on the ground with cases of water. There was a young Muslim couple who pulled up in a Honda Civic and handed over boxes of baby formula.

“It’s good to see Alberta coming together,” said Cherneske, as other volunteers fervently shook hands with the shy, hijab-wearing woman.

At a fuel stop in St. Albert, meanwhile, random bystanders virtually threw money at the convoy.

First a man shoved five $20 bills into Cherneske’s hands. Other patrons joined in with fistfuls of cash. The clerk took $20 from her wallet and handed over a free jerry can from the back room.

Just over 24 hours after flames surged into Fort McMurray, it’s not tremendously easy to get vehicles into the area. Highway 63, Fort McMurray’s only link to the south, keeps getting cut off by fire — stranding as many as 10,000 evacuees in camps north of the city.

Still, on Facebook some veteran oilsands workers are plotting a convoy over the Peerless Road, a remote 100 km stretch of gravel road that might allow them to sneak into northern settlements via a back entrance.

Tristin Hopper

That’s what this convoy might have done, if the risks of running it at night weren’t so great.

Also fleeing the fire are thousands of animals. While coyotes and deer can be spotted in time thanks to their reflective eyes, a moose can appear out of nowhere, and lay waste to even the most souped-up Alberta brodozer.

It’s not entirely clear what officials think of this spontaneous avalanche of supplies. Although provincial representatives are acknowledging the intense “Albertans helping Albertans” credo.

But it’s fair to say that these convoys are fuelled in part by a mistrust of the Red Cross; the idea that it’s an insult for an NGO of salaried professionals to be bringing Fort McMurray back from the ashes when Albertans should be doing it themselves for free.

Just before 2 a.m., careful monitoring of social media and text messages with fellow convoys finally reveals a place taking donations. Kikino Silver Birch Resort, a campground on the Kikino Metis Settlement where 500 Fort McMurrayites had taken shelter after the fire.

Housed in packed cabins or RVs sleeping as many as 10, many lived in Beacon Hill, the subdivision utterly flattened by fire.

They’ll probably be here for weeks, and as the evacuees slept, the convoy stopped, formed human chains and disgorged its load onto the already growing pile of supplies at the Kikino cookhouse.

More supplies would be dropped off at Beaver Lake Cree Nation, where the community had opened up its health centre and main hall to deal with an expected tide of evacuees from Anzac.

Dawn was breaking when Cherneske and company headed back to Edmonton to get one or two hours’ sleep and then load up another convoy for a similar “turn and burn” drop-off in Northern Alberta.

It’s conceivable that much of this effort could be for naught. The conditions of a province on fire are so unpredictable that’s it’s virtually impossible for an impromptu network of amateurs coordinating on Facebook to ensure an efficient delivery of proper supplies to the people who need them.

“That’s the way these things go; you’ve got to make the best guess as to where things need to be,” said Cherneske.

For years to come, small town community centres throughout Northern Alberta could well find their storerooms packed with dusty granola bars, water bottles and shampoo for the Fort McMurray evacuees who never arrived.

But there are worse ways to direct spontaneous outpourings of goodwill. In the push to offer succour to Fort McMurray, Muslim has embraced Christian. Indigenous has embraced non-Indigenous. Toyota owner has befriended Dodge owner.

In a few weeks, these will be the same people flooding expertise and equipment into the still-smoldering ruins of Fort Mac to clear debris and rebuild homes.

Several metric tonnes of baby wipes and bottled water couldn’t bring back Fort McMurray, but for the hundreds of people who fought sleep, dropped everything and ran up their credit cards to try, they at least knew they couldn’t do anything less.

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